


i'd see delight in the shade of the morning sun

by pinuspinea



Series: Swan Lake remixes [1]
Category: Swan Lake & Related Fandoms, Лебединое озеро - Чайковски | Swan Lake - Tchaikovsky
Genre: Dubious Consent, F/M, Fairy Tale Retellings, Unreliable Narrator
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-01
Updated: 2019-12-01
Packaged: 2021-02-26 02:22:15
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,480
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21635794
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pinuspinea/pseuds/pinuspinea
Summary: Once upon a time, a sorcerer came across a young woman, fell in love, and asked her to become his wife, but she ran into the lake. The sorcerer ran after her and transformed her into a beautiful swan, and he spent years wearing her down, showering her in all his gifts of love. And eventually, she gave in.Snapshots of the swan queen and the lake she calls her home.
Relationships: Odette & Odile, Odette & Swan Maidens, Odette/Prints Siegfried | Prince Siegfried, Odette/Von Rothbart, Odile & Von Rothbart
Series: Swan Lake remixes [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1824241
Comments: 10
Kudos: 23





	i'd see delight in the shade of the morning sun

When they come across each other, she is just a girl and he has been a grown man for quite some time already. She is young and naive, filled with dreams and a wandering mind. He is immediately drawn to her. He watches her first from afar, and then moves closer to her. She is radiant like the lake's still surface in the moonlight.

One time, he finds her in a garden during a moonlit night. She is looking over the lake and when she looks up to him, her wide eyes are filled with the wonders of the world. He sits down next to her and listens to her musings about what the stars and galaxies above look like reflected from the surface of the lake, and he bends his head a little closer and takes in her scent, his eyes half closed.

She is often in the garden during clear nights. Spring turns to summer and he learns her name: Odette. The name is as beautiful as she is. Odette. Such a mortal name for something so enticing.

He sometimes shows himself to her in the garden, sometimes keeping to the shadows and simply watching her from there. When he does show himself, she always seems glad to have him there.

One night, when autumn is starting to arrive, he sits down next to her and wraps her delicate hands with his own hands.

"Be my wife, and I shall give you everything you could ever hope for," he tells her and conjures her a ring with his magic. Her eyes are wide, fearful. She pulls her hands away from him and stumbles away. He follows her to the shores of the lake.

"Odette, do not do this," he tells her seriously. Her lip is wobbling. She is quietly shaking her head, her eyes darting around. She knows she cannot outrun him.

She flees into the lake, and he follows her, dives after her into the smooth waters. The water's embrace is cold. Her white dress floats all around her like she is a ghost. She kicks and tries to dive deeper, but he catches her leg.

His magic wraps all around her. The flowing dress turns into feathers.

Swans cannot drown. Her body bounces up onto the surface, him right next to her. Her wings flap around helplessly. He pulls her onto the shore and studies her. She is still beautiful. Her tears have turned into a silvery crown on top of her head. He kneels next to his little swan queen and looks her in the eye.

"Once you marry me, you will have your human form back for the rest of your days, but not a day sooner," he tells her and locks the spell into place.

* * *

A swan now lives on the lake where the fair maiden Odette disappeared. Some whisper that the swan must be her spirit, left behind to float on the waves. Von Rothbart likes the idea and helps to cement it in everyone's mind.

There is a father left behind, a father who mourns the loss of his only daughter, and a mother who often comes to the lake during the afternoons. Von Rothbart keeps a careful eye on Odette during those moments, dressed in his own form of a black bird. Odette never comes to the shore when there are people around, never approaches anyone. She is too afraid of what they may do to her. Some humans show their love by trapping what is beautiful, killing it in the process.

During the dusk, she sometimes comes to shore and waits there. On those occasions, von Rothbart joins her and touches gently her pure-white feathers. She spreads her wings open. Feathers turn into fingers, her fingers spread wide open as the magic transforms her. She no longer looks like the girl who desperately ran into the lake. She still has the silvery crown, her old dress torn at the bottom into what reminds him of feathers.

She no longer tries to avoid him during these moments. Instead, she keeps calm and looks over her lake with eyes that reflect the moonlight.

He sometimes touches her hand. She never pulls her hand away, not even when he bends over to kiss her hand.

"My little swan queen," he murmurs against her knuckles.

Her eyes are dark with a thousand unspoken words as it falls from his grasp, limp against her side.

* * *

Odette is lonely, and von Rothbart knows it. The years pass so quickly, her parents growing old and dying, her brothers leaving for their own lives and them dying as well, just as well as their children and their children's children. Odette's name disappears from human memory. Von Rothbart, who previously enjoyed travelling, settles to live with her on the shores of her lake.

The old villages disappear. The forest starts to get called haunted. Odette is alone, so alone, and von Rothbart knows she cries sometimes during those nights when she thinks he doesn't come to her. Her crown grows more elaborate, her hands become more delicate, her dress gets more embroidered with a thousand sparkling tears and the fabric reminds him increasingly of feathers.

Odette is lonely, and he knows it, so one day, he steps out of the shadow with five swans. Odette looks at him with wide eyes, always such wide and beautiful eyes, as he gently touches the swans and turns them into the maidens they are. Finally, he touches Odette. She stands in front of her maidens.

Her eyes are filled with a horrifying question. He shakes his head.

"I made them for you, my dear," he murmurs, "your very own swan maidens to keep you company."

The maidens are quiet and smile gently at their new queen. Odette steps closer to them, a little hesitant. The maidens greet her softly like the swans they are.

When von Rothbart takes Odette's hand and kisses it, she does not flinch away or look at him with those dark eyes. She does not let her hand fall limp against her side. Instead, she closes her eyes for a moment.

Her lips are soft and cool against his cheek. She quickly gets back and looks at him. He smiles at his Odette, his little swan queen, and caresses the back of her hand with his thumb.

"Do you like them, Odette?" he asks her. She nods her head with a small smile.

"Thank you," she tells him with a quiet voice.

* * *

Sometimes he creates new swan maidens for her to play with. Their faces are different from another, but all are variations on a theme. He doesn't know if Odette has realised it, but all these swans are reflections of her image. The eldest are what she could have been, once upon a time, had she chosen to answer his proposal in a different matter. The smallest are like he remembers her when he first fell in love with her: filled with all the youth a young maiden can have, full of life and wonders.

She grows quiet during her years, so used to not speaking with her maidens. They help her, he can see it, but she does need her time alone.

Sometimes, she approaches him of her own free will. She will occasionally come to that side of the lake where he first saw her and spoke to her, but never quite reaching the garden and the house von Rothbart paid to be built nearby.

On the shores of her lake, trees grow tall and dark. He meets her there, never forcing her to come to the garden. Odette sometimes looks at the water where she dove all those years ago, but she says nothing.

She is pale and beautiful during those moonlit nights. Von Rothbart never takes what he isn't given, and Odette so rarely gives her something, but each smile and each tentative kiss on his cheek is treasured.

Tonight, Odette is restless. He bends closer to her. Odette looks up to him when he takes the crown off her head. She looks much more like the girl he used to know without her crown. Suddenly, she is no longer the swan queen he is used to seeing, but just a girl.

He bends over and kisses her. She does not move for a moment, but then, tentatively, she kisses him back.

He stretches her on the white sand and kisses her fingers, her beautiful white neck, her face. She looks at him with the wide, dark eyes, and lies under him, soft and pliable.

Afterwards, she is still and keeps her eyes closed. He traces the shape of her face with his fingertips.

"I used to think I'd never get used to seeing the light of day," she murmurs. He hums and brings her fingers for him to kiss again and again and again. Odette opens her eyes.

"You could see delight in the shade of the morning sun any time you wanted," he reminds her. She looks over to the lake.

"I don't think it works like that," she tells him, quiet, pondering, his little swan queen in all the possible ways. He leans over her and kisses her cheekbones, her closed eyes, her lips that are almost blue in the moonlight.

When the morning arrives, he waits for it with her and watches as she closes her eyes, takes in a few quick breaths. His magic, woven so many years ago, turns her back into what he made her into. The swan queen walks over to the water and floats away.

He returns to his house and watches her from the highest window how she joins her swan maidens, how they rest in the reeds and how they arch their necks so very beautifully, how his swan queen's crown glitters like a shining jewel, setting her apart from all his other creations.

* * *

He knows the spell has changed even before dusk settles the next evening. He watches over the lake to where his swans are, over where Odette floats on the waves, and the sun sets. Odette's wings flap helplessly before she slips underneath the waves. Her maidens are there immediately. They pull their queen above water and onto the shore where he is already waiting.

He takes off his coat and wraps it over her. Odette looks up to him with large eyes, and then she swallows thickly and looks at her hands. She is in shock.

He studies the woman before him, her pale face and drenched hair, the dress that clings to her form. The maidens are all around them, quiet and keeping guard. Odette looks small in his black coat, somehow odd with the dark colour upon her.

"Magic sometimes senses intent," he murmurs and sweeps his hands over her. Her hair dries and the dress stops clinging onto her. "I did say that you would not see a single day as a human, didn't I?"

Odette frowns and studies her hands.

"It seems you will have this form during the nights even when I do not come to you," he murmurs and touches her cheek. She looks at her maidens. They all have their unreadable faces. They never reveal any emotion when he is around, though he has seen them much livelier with just their queen with them.

Odette nods quietly and then takes of his coat off her shoulders. He accepts it back without even a word.

Odette's eyes have something very odd in them as she stares at the lake. He studies her for a long time. The maidens leave them until they are alone on the shore, swans in the reeds nearby, maidens waiting for their queen in the forest.

She walks with him when he wraps his arm around her waist, and they travel the shores of the lake in silence.

* * *

Von Rothbart knows something is wrong the moment white wings flap desperately on the sky. He can feel Odette's fear as she plummets from the sky, and it takes all of his concentration to push his magic to help her, to guide the winds to float her gently on top of the water, near her maidens. She still falls from the sky, and he shifts forms and flies to her.

The maidens are just pulling her onto the shore. Odette's face is pale when his touch brings forth the woman's form. The arrow nocked in her arm makes him freeze with rage. He looks at the maidens.

"Kill him," he whispers to his creations. "Kill whoever hurt your queen."

The maidens look to the other side of the lake at the hunting party that is just starting to emerge from the woods. Von Rothbart picks up Odette. She is light as a feather in his arms.

He brings his swan queen to his house and lays her down on his bed. She is pale, the arrow jutting from her arm seemingly drawing all the colour from her. He bends over her and grasps it. A murmured spell ensures she will keep sleeping, not knowing of the pain.

He discards the broken arrow in the fireplace and then murmurs spells that help the wound to heal. Her arm will hurt for a long time, that he knows already. The bone has been damaged.

He closes the curtains and summons grey skies above his house.

She sleeps in his bed, so innocent, so small, so very beautiful, and he sits by the fire and writes. Every now and then, he will glance at her. He can feel his magic still working on her. He can feel how it weaves onto her muscles and skin, how it retraces the pain away.

She opens her eyes after a murmur, half a name, with a small sigh of pain. He gets up and goes to sit by her. Odette has a frown on her face.

She is dizzy with his magic as she is. He gently runs his fingers on her lips and quietens her before she has the chance to say anything.

"Hush, Odette," he tells her. "As long as you sleep in my bed, you will remain in that form. You need to heal."

Her eyes search for him, not knowing what he means. He leans over and kisses her forehead softly.

He knows her thoughts are blurry, of course they are. They are blurry with the after-image of pain, blurry with her confusion, blurry with the knowledge that he is there, and she is, for the first time ever, in his house. He knows his magic has revealed some of his thoughts to her, but which, he does not know for certain.

"We are as good as married, as long as you stay here," he murmurs and draws patterns into her skin with the tips of his fingers.

She sleeps in his bed for a few days, days that feel long when he settles next to her, days that are much too short. The bone finally knits itself together. There is no scar where the arrow pierced her, just another silvery band of jewels.

He walks her to the lake. The maidens have gathered to wait. Some look up with black feathers in their skirts. He knows these ones took care of the men who hurt his Odette.

Odette looks over the lake. One of the maidens gives him a crown.

"It seems like a king tried to steal your lake from you," he murmurs to Odette. The woman swallows and looks up at the sky that is turning grey with the emerging light of day.

"They tried to hunt the little swans," she tells him and looks at the quartet. Those little swans have unreadable faces as he studies them.

"And now they will hunt no one anymore," he reminds. Odette lowers her eyes.

He flings the king's crown into the centre of the lake. It sinks quickly into the depths.

Soon after, she grows her wings again. She is missing a feather or two where the arrow pierced her wing, and he studies it gently.

"You shouldn't fly for a few weeks, but it will heal," he tells her and then watches as Odette and her maidens take to the lake.

A few days later, the king's body is found in the forest, torn apart by wild animals. Von Rothbart leads the search to the mangled corpse and is there when the news are delivered to the queen and the young prince who will become the next king.

He decides to keep an eye on young Siegfried.

* * *

Odette starts avoiding him. At first, he pays it no mind, knowing that the swan queen has her moments of hatred for him. She will eventually return to him. She always does.

This time, she doesn't show any signs of returning to normal, so he starts paying attention. The maidens point her out to him when he asks them to tell where their queen has gone. He eventually manages to catch Odette. She is curled over herself as if pain. He wraps his arms around her. She sobs quietly.

He can feel the swell of her stomach under his hands, and he gently kisses her neck.

"You should have told me," he tells her. Odette keeps crying, more tears falling down her neck, adding to the decorations of her dress. He turns her around and studies the roundness of her stomach.

His hand passes over it, his magic a slow tingle on her skin. She flinches a little. He looks into her eyes.

"Our daughter is quite well," he tells her, "although I do wish you would have told me yourself. It's not exactly safe to transform when expecting a child, neither for you nor for her."

Odette wipes her tears but doesn't say anything as he pulls her hand and drags her into his house.

The next morning, she does not transform, and neither the next one. He keeps her inside during the days, sleeps next to her, treats her like he would treat her if she had agreed to be his wife. He gives her everything she wants. He makes certain her body doesn't ache and that their child has all she will need.

The months pass in the blink of an eye for him, so very fast. He almost gets used to it all when one day Odette goes even paler than she normally is and grasps her stomach.

She gives him a daughter, a daughter as beautiful as her mother, but their daughter has his searching and intent eyes in the shape of her wide and wondrous eyes. Their daughter is perfect.

Odette lies in childbed, exhausted and face marred by the aches of her body, and studies their daughter, always so quiet.

"Odile," she tells him the name. He nods his head.

"Odile," he agrees and starts healing her.

The next morning, Odette has returned to her maidens, but she comes to the house more willingly now. Sometimes, when the day is gentle and the sun soft, he will bring his daughter to the shores and show her the swan maidens and their queen. Sometimes, Odette will approach them, waiting for the sun to set.

Sometimes, Odile will study her mother's transformation with her dark, intent eyes before she is hugged and kissed by Odette.

* * *

Their daughter grows into a beautiful young woman, a sorceress in her own worth. He teaches her spells and the secrets of magic he has acquired, and Odette teaches her daughter the gentle elegance of swan maidens. Odile sometimes takes on her feathered form. Her colouring is black, just like all her dresses, and she has rubies for eyes. Among the white swans, she is stunning, an apparition and a mirror image to their purity. Among the black swans who killed the king who tried to hurt Odette, their daughter is a queen.

Odette sometimes studies Odile in peace and quiet. He does not try to guess at what she must be thinking about. If she wanted him to know, she would tell him.

And so, the years pass. Odile becomes a young woman, close to Odette's age when he gave her the title and lands of a swan queen. The prince grows old, just as well. Von Rothbart keeps an eye on the matters of the court, spends time there guiding everyone to avoid the lake, but he waits for his moment to strike and to take revenge on the family who hurt his Odette. On the day prince Siegfried reaches his majority, he grants the prince a beautiful silver crossbow and tells him of a lake where there the most beautiful swans are.

He follows the prince, of course he does, ready to intervene if any harm would come to either Odette or her maidens. He follows Siegfried as he notches an arrow and aims.

The prince does not shoot. Instead he lowers his weapon and looks as Odette lands on the shore, spreads open her wings, bends her head back. She takes in a breath as a swan that leaves the lungs of a human, and then she rises.

Siegfried rushes to her, drawn by the sight. Odette still looks young, so very young, and the prince is a fool.

Von Rothbart watches as the boy draws Odette into his arms. She tries to break free, and then, she doesn't.

Von Rothbart's eyes settle on the form of his beloved swan queen. Anger boils inside him until it becomes ice. Odette allows Siegfried to caress her face, for him to dance with her in moonlight, for the swan maidens to surround them until the prince is almost invisible among them all.

The morning arrives, Odette turns into a swan like she has turned thousands of times, and von Rothbart chases the prince away in his winged form.

Odette is surrounded by her swan maidens when he goes to get her.

"What is it about him that is so much more appealing than myself?" he harshly asks her. "His youth, his naivety, his title?"

She does not answer him, of course she doesn't. Swans do not speak.

* * *

He takes Odile to the ball where Siegfried is supposed to declare his bride. Odette has been locked inside the house, sat in front of a mirror where she will be able to see everything. Odile follows her father's orders, mostly enthralled by the idea of her very first ball, and he watches with pride as his daughter shines like a dark sun.

He can feel Odette's pain as their daughter catches the eyes of the prince. He does not see Odile for what she is. Instead, he sees the same face Odette has, the same elegance, the same wing-like arms.

They dance and he falls in love with what he thinks is Odette. Von Rothbart's lips form into a bitter smile. The fool cannot tell apart the swans. He does not have the eye for detail, not enough experience to tell apart Odette's restraint and Odile's liveliness. He sees what he wants to see, a phantom image of love he has conjured.

Siegfried swears eternal love for Odile. His daughter bursts into laughter.

"You fool," von Rothbart tells him with a sneer and pulls Odile away from him. Odile's eyes are dancing like a thousand fires. "Can you not even tell apart a mother from her daughter, a queen from a magician?"

Siegfried is heartbroken as von Rothbart gathers Odile and they fly to their home by the lake.

Odette is crying by the mirror. She grasps for Odile. Their daughter settles for her mother's embrace.

"You needed to see it for what it was," von Rothbart tells Odette, not unkindly, but with enough sternness that she knows he did this all for her own good. "He fell in love with a dream, not what you truly are."

Odette weeps and clutches her daughter tighter.

* * *

Outside, the swan maidens play with Siegfried. He searches their faces for Odette's. He is lost in all the small variations. He does not know where the swan queen is. He does not know how von Rothbart pulls her out into the garden, how they stand in the shadows of trees.

"Go to him, Odette," he tells her harshly. "Go to him and see if he recognises you without your crown."

Odette looks like her maidens without her crown and with her dress as simple as theirs. She steps among them all. The prince is still searching. Even when von Rothbart closes his eyes, he still knows which one his Odette is.

Siegfried searches and passes by Odette. Von Rothbart turns to his daughter.

"It is time," he tells Odile. The young girl nods her head. Her father weaves his magic over her, turns her to look like the swan queen. Among the maidens, Odette follows what is happening with her wide, dark eyes.

Odile glitters in the moonlight, the spell making her look like an apparition from another world. The prince rushes over. He does not sense the danger when the maids run around the two.

Odile smiles and lets the maidens pull Siegfried into the embrace of the lake. He fights, calls for Odette's name, and the spell is broken. The last thing he ever sees is how the dark maiden returns to her mother's side and does not even pay attention to what happens in the water.

Odette stands on the shore and watches as Siegfried disappears. There is no sorcerer to chase him. No one dives after him. Only her maidens keep him company under the still surface of the lake. He never surfaces again, and neither do the maidens. Odette knows it.

Only she, von Rothbart, and their daughter stand on the shore. He touches her hand.

"Do you see now?" he whispers and kisses her knuckles. "Do you understand now?"

She looks up to him with eyes that are tired. She closes them and presses against his chest, a frail little thing. Odile watches the happenings with interested eyes.

"Please," Odette murmurs. "Please."

He takes the ring he has had for years, for decades, for centuries, and slips it into her finger, a triumphant smile on his face.

* * *

Odette never spreads her wings again, but sometimes, she watches as her daughter plays on the shore with the black swans she has brought out from the depths of the water. During those moments, he slips behind Odette and wraps an arm around her tiny waist.

Odette is quiet, a mute bird in the cage of his house, and she never sings, but as swans do not sing, he does not mind. He simply cherishes the woman, loves her in the only way he knows, and shows her all her can offer to her.

She is a mute and beautiful thing, his Odette.

**Author's Note:**

> This little thing was inspired by me seeing Brno's newest Swan Lake. In that version, the prologue heavily implies that von Rothbart had romantic feelings for Odette and turned her into a swan because she didn't reciprocate his feelings. Add to this the fact that I've always wondered about Odile's origins (really? A daughter of von Rothbart whose name is eerily similar to Odette's?), and you can pretty much guess why my plot bunnies exploded out of their cage.
> 
> Hope you liked this version of the story!


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